Brazil day 12 / Colombia day 1 – Leaving Brazil to catch a flight to go to Colombia for scuba diving

This was a very long dayyyyy of nothing but travel on a plane. It first started with a very early wakeup at around 2 am in order to get my gear all ready, head over to the front desk to check-out, and wait for my ride to take me to the airport. It was a bitter goodbye to Brazil as I wanted to stay longer but when you got to go, you got to go. I definitely enjoyed my time in Brazil from the food to the waters to the warm climate to the culture, but it was just expensive. That last part I knew I wasn’t going to miss at all, but onwards to my next destination: Taganga, Colombia. It required a lot of plane trips as I would fly from Rio de Janeiro to Lima, Peru, change planes to go to Quito, Ecuador, where it was just a drop-off and pickup stop, go to Medellin, Colombia to go through customs. Yes! Finally back in Colombia! It had been at least 2+ years since I was in Colombia.

Medellin was the first place where I noticed a change in Colombia as the peso was more valuable. It used to be over 2300 pesos to the dollar and now it was like 1700 to the dollar. Sheesh, what a swing in several years since the last time I was there! And then it was to Bogota and then finally to Santa Marta where I would have to take a taxi to get to Tagang.

One interesting thing that I had to immediately embrace while changing planes in Medellin was the time differences of getting things done. After waiting for awhile at the airport, there was an announcement that all of the planes were delayed due to the rainstorms. I couldn’t believe how much rain was coming in the place that was called the city of eternal spring. Well, to me, the delays didn’t affect me at all since after Medellin, I would have to wait again for awhile in Bogota in order to catch the late flight to Santa Marta.

One thing I realized about going to Santa Marta was the sheer increase in the number of people going. In the past, there were only about 20 people going into Santa Marta, but now, it was a full flight! But as soon as I got off, I could see that there was a change to the airport as well. No doubt some kind of remodeling was done and expanded parking space but again, I noticed in the past there were only 3 taxis. Now, there were like 20 of them! The price to go to Taganga also went up from 25,000 pesos to 40,000! I bargained with one driver who agreed to knock it down to 30,000, but still, what a change! The good part about going into Taganga was that I noticed not much has changed by looking from a distance until I got up-close to it. That was going to wait until the morning after I got some sleep in.